


First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 3: The Overcoat.

by SkiesOverTokyo



Series: FirstFan NaNoWriMo Drabbles [3]
Category: First Fantasy (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Backstory, Fluff and Angst, NaNoWriMo, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 23:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16504787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkiesOverTokyo/pseuds/SkiesOverTokyo
Summary: A reminiscence involving Tam's jacket.Pre-series





	First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 3: The Overcoat.

She finds Tam in a backstreet. He’s been in another fight with apprentices from another guild, probably the Cooks or Sundry Craftsmen. She can tell. Maria of Jacks always can. This quiet alley, in the neutral space between the mock-warring bands of guild-boys, is his haunt when he wants to be alone, tucked away behind an apothecary and a quiet Dvarven Inn that sees little custom outside of winter or tourney season. From the way he leans against the wall, in the half-gloom, he’s been punched hard in two or three places, and his steps out of the corner as she approaches are still a little unsteady.   
  
Unusual. Tam normally shirks away from these kind of things, his wiry small frame no match for teenagers with half a foot or more on him, or uses some illusion or confusion to turn that disadvantage against them, but this time he’s dispensed with cunning and tricks, and fought hand to hand. Though she can tell he’s been crying, more from the clear pain he’s still in, his shoulder barely shift, and a twinge of something resembling anxiety twists in Maria’s chest. _He’s trained himself not to cry too loudly._  
  
She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s over an hour late to their rendezvous, and simply stands there, as Tam wipes away snot and tears with the back of his hand, and turns to face her. He’s been in the wars alright, a bruise forming over one eye already, another gathering strength on his cheek, knuckles scraped and bleeding on one hand. His lip is split, blood dried down his chin. She’s surprised when Tam takes a few steps towards her, then breaks into a half run, almost throwing himself into her. She staggers a little, catches him, and blinks in surprise as he buries himself in her chest, the tears blooming from him as he sobs into her over-shirt.  
  
“Tam…?”  
Something is wrong. Tam has never been one to show weakness, a boy who sat resolute as she’d pulled splinters from his hand after he’d nearly fallen out of a window and caught himself with a rotten ledge, who put a wide, gap-toothed smile on after disappointment, who put a brave face on a lot of things that would lead others to downfall. He cries like a normal boy, sure, but never in public, never like this.  
  
Through sniffles, voice-half shot, Tam mutters something that she has to strain to hear.   
“They…said…I-I was…abandoned. That…only children that their parents don’t want ever end up in the Thieves Guild…that…”  
He wipes the tears away again, steps back. That’s more like the normal Tam. The kid’s had a shock, that’s all, a guild-boy twisting words like a knife, knowing that their impact would make the red mist descend and end up in a fist-fight.  
“Boss…it’s…not true, is it?”  
  
Maria finds herself in an awkward situation. Technically, the guild-boy _was_ correct, but there was a way to say this…  
“Ok, well.”  
She takes a breath, and rubs her temples a little, cursing Lord Cave for being so bad at making new guild-members feel welcome. She makes a mental note to drop in and have a chat with that skeletal King of Highwaymen, and have a Few Well-Placed Words. Perhaps Bliza could assist, since those two got on so very well with each other  
“The truth is, Tam. Sometimes parents can’t look after their children. It doesn’t mean they don’t love you, or that they made the decision lightly. Sometimes health, money, or conflict separates you from them. And…”  
A white lie presents itself  
“And, to tell you the truth, the entire Guild is like that. We look after children that their parents can’t or…won’t look after, because we ourselves are children like that. And I’m sure that when you’re a Guild Brother, when you’re older, you’ll want to look after children who lost their parents too, right?”  
  
Maria pauses, worried at his reaction. To her relief, he nods, but fixes her with an expression that she’s rarely seen on him.  
Worry.  
“Do…you…remember your parents?”  
The question takes her completely by surprise. Lord Cave himself has commented how observant, how smart, and how perceptive the boy is. She sighs, and shakes her head.  
“I don’t, Tam. I was very young, there was a war, in the south. Lord Bargeld was in the area, and found me stumbling around in the ruins, and took me in”  
_Lord Bargeld was the reason the war ended, though he was also the reason the war began_ she reminds herself.  
“I…don’t suppose you remember?”  
“No…”  
  
She shrugs   
“See. We’re the same.”  
He nods, cheerfully grinning up at her through the bruises and cuts, then holds out a hand, little finger extended. Ah, yes, this custom. Gods knows where he’d picked it up from, but with a hundred cultures colliding in an explosion of smells, and sounds and little cultural quirks, from the Rüstungnomadenstadt warrior castes, arms decorated with row after row of beads, charms, and little trinkets from across the world, an entire life’s successes, failures, and lessons marked on thick reindeer hide ties around thick, muscled arms, to the mysterious cloaked Treasure Keepers who stocked, from an odd little headquarters on the edge of the Adventurer’s Guild’s sprawling complex, the dungeons of the world, it was small wonder that a fair bit of it had rubbed off on an impressionable boy.

  
She hooks her little finger in his and chants the strange little prayer to the Goddess of Luck, the Little Lady, Kona-Kaledaemonium. She doesn’t want to tell him that the Emperor’s father’s father, remembered in statues as a small, graceful little man, never without a thick wooden staff, had banned her worship a century ago, her churches gone, her memory erased outside of mouldy old books, the Dice-cult, the Card-cult disbanded, her statues burnt and scattered to the four winds.   
Let the boy have his Goddess of Luck, his little prayer. Let him have all the luck he deserves.  
  
They make their way out of the alley, the boy’s usual chatter returning, wanting to know what a nearby stall was selling, who the strange trio observing the pale winter sun from a hole in a tall board were and what they were doing, openly stared as a short, loudmouthed girl with flaming red hair that reached her waist passed, a strange gaggle in her wake, and grinned at a bard playing bawdy and impressively inappropriate song on a battered, travelworn lute, who winked back, then returned to her song.   
  
Atop his usual metal cage, the usual skull-like paint covering his surprisingly young features, the man that this half-mile near the docks has daubed Mister Prophet is at his usual stich, prowling back and forth atop the metalwork, engaging the milling crowds in half-yelled debate, from the gentrification of magecraft to the nature of kingship in the modern world, to the price of a good pie and a pint, in his thick, accented Yahonese. Below him, at each edge of the cage, his four colleagues barter in the only thing a man like that deals in-information, from near and far, world-changing and mundane, true and false, receiving information in return on thin, carefully typed pieces of paper. One of the Guildmaesters had once surmised, albeit jokingly, that the man singlehandledly generated the rumours and stories of the city, and through his quartet passed the news of the Empire. Not far from the mark, Maria had to agree.  
  
The skull-painted man pauses in his walk as Tam and Maria pass the edge of the small crowd that hang on his strange lecture, and yells, in that lilting voice that carries above the din  
“Well fought, Crow! Maybe you’ll beat them one day, with that fire in your heart”  
And he goes back to his lecture, now launching into a lengthy aside on why dragons artificially controlled the value of gold to nefarious ends, as Tam tries to bury himself further in his hood, to Maria’s amusement.   
“You know, he doesn’t usually bother nicknaming people, unless they’re famous…or infamous. And maybe he’s right”, she chides   
“Look, don’t take what they said to heart. Bakers are idiots anyway. Head full of flour and not much else. And if it was those idiots from Crafts, well…they’re even worse, sawdust heads, and I happen to drink with Maester Boris on occasion, so if they bother you again…”  
She draws a finger across her throat, and is pleased to see Tam laughing.  
  
An idea comes to her then.  
“Say, Tam.”  
He cocks his head, looking up at her  
“It’s…Yule soon, isn’t it?”  
Nod  
“Well, I was thinking…Well….I know that in theory I’m meant to give you useful things, and I’m sure that Lords Cave, Bargeld and Harvey won’t approve but…they don’t have to know, do they?”  
“Maria?”  
“What I’m trying to say, kid, is that I want to get you a present for Yule. Ok?”  
“Ok.”  
A pause. She had no idea what to get him.  
“Any ideas?”  
He cocked his head the other way, deep in thought for a few seconds  
“A coat like yours?”  
She laughs  
“You know, you can borrow mine any time you want. It’ll be way too big for you, though, you know? Hang on…”  
She pulls the coat off her back, quickly swipes the knives from their hiding spots up her sleeves, and holds it out to him  
“Here, try it on. Maybe when you’re a guildmaester I’ll give you my coat, given that I’ll probably stop doing fieldwork by then, except when it’s totally necessary…”  
  
He puts it on, hands barely reaching the end of the sleeves, the hem just above the floor by virtue of the thickness of his boots. He turns in it, admiring his reflection in a nearby clothes stall mirror. It suits him, she has to agree. A few more years, teenage-hood and a much-needed growth spurt, a little bit of tailoring to fit it to his slight build, and it’ll suit him perfectly.    
He smiles, sheepishly, and reluctantly takes it off, handing it back to her. She pulls it back on, thankful for the extra layer in the cold sun.  
“C’mon, kiddo. Let’s get coffee. It’s freezing out here. My treat.”  
She winks   
“And no, that’s _not_ your Yule present, kiddo. You’ll get this coat one day. Promise”  


-

I wake in the half gloom, instantly knowing I am not alone. It’s something that Father called a Guide’s Sense, an ability not only to communicate beyond but to know when it is present. I prop myself up, find my glasses on the stool next to my bedroll, and put them on, letting my eyes adjust to the half-light. I gasp.  
Tam is curled up under a mixture of blankets and the thick leather coat that barely fits him, which he refuses to part with. He’s not let it out of his sight since he came here almost two seasons ago, wearing it through a long winter into a mild spring and a warm summer. Its dearness to him now becomes apparent.   
  
Crouching next to him is a woman, head shaved on one side, hair falling in a messy style on the other, a little taller than me. She runs a hand that passes through his hair, and sighs softly to herself. I wonder for a moment if this is his mother, but the woman seems barely a score and ten summers old. I realise I’ve been staring for a solid minute as she catches my eye and starts, turning to reveal dark patches in the light grey hooded tunic she wears, not unlike Tam’s. I know death wounds when I see them. So this woman is from the Beyond, and clearly close to Tam in some way.  
  
“You can…see me?”  
I nod  
“You’d be the first.”  
“Can he…?”  
“No. I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want him to see me…like this. Poor kid.”  
“Who…?”  
“I’m Maria.”  
Ah. Maria. The mentor who’d died and left this boy to fend for himself…  
No. Not died.  
She’d been murdered.  She looks down, and I’m surprised to find pride on her translucent features, against the soft glow of a rising sun.  
“Take…good care of him, ok? I’m not sure…how often I’ll appear, but…it’s…good to know someone’s looking after him. Even though I cou-“  
“I promise” I find myself saying. She smiles, and leans down one last time, running her fingers along the collar of the coat, just below Tam’s neck. Tam stirs, pulls the jacket around his small form like a treasured children’s toy, and falls back into sleep. She can’t help but grin.  
“I told you…you’d get it in the end…didn’t I?”  
She stands, and is gone.    
  



End file.
